Well whadya know? Three
poorly played games send Red Sox Nation into full-on panic mode. And the beginning
of a fourth doesn’t engender much confidence. (“All you can do now is laugh.
Its just that bad,” wrote one SoSHer last night as the score ratcheted up to
4-0, bad guys.) Then, quite suddenly, the
baseball gods deigned to smile upon us again.
Perseverance.
Timely
hitting.
Good
relief pitching.
Lucky
breaks.
Base stealing!
So that’s how you win baseball games.
It didn’t look so good at
first. Teams like the Kansas City Royals are not supposed to be shutting teams
like the Boston Red Sox out after six innings, are not supposed to carry four-run
leads into the seventh.
But Doug Mirabelli decided
to remedy that situation. Let’s just thank our lucky stars that home plate ump Jim
Joyce was about as
blind as James Joyce.
Coco
Crisp, who officially broke out of his slump with his third hit of the
night in the bottom of the seventh, drove home a slow footed Manny Ramirez.
(Manny scored as the other
Doug inexplicably cut off the throw. Perhaps he was preoccupied
with Larry Lucchino and this silly, silly ball saga.)
Then, with Joel Peralta
replacing the finally-hittable Luke Hudson, our chicken-parm-loving
backup catcher stepped to the plate. He took a strike looking, then three
straight balls. Then.... it shoulda been ball four. It should have loaded the bases.
But it was called a strike.
Dougie grimaced, and wrung
his gloveless hands around his bat.
Then he sent the next pitch
into the Monster seats in left-center.
What’s that Tim McCarver used
to say? “A walk is as
good as a home run?”
Uh, no thanks.
From that point on, it all
worked just like it should: Timlin came on to pitch a perfect eighth. Mark
Loretta singled to center to lead off the ninth. David Ortiz hit a hard chopper over the head of his
old buddy to move Loretta to third. Willie Harris pinch ran. Manny sent him
home with a towering sac fly.
Jonathan Papelbon sealed the deal with a perfect
ninth.
Dirty. Water.
The bad news? Tim
Wakefield is still hurting, and it’s looking
worse than we feared.
Rotoworld lays it on the line: “If Wakefield goes on the DL,
it would put both Kyle Snyder and Jason Johnson in the rotation until David
Wells returns.” There are so many frightening parts of that sentence, I don’t
even know where to begin.
Maybe we could ink Ferrell to an incentive-laden three-month deal?
At least we’re not
paying $25,680,727 a year for a
guy who makes three errors in a game.